Top Ten: Like illustration? Love our round up of the year’s best!

Illustration, more than any other discipline we cover on It’s Nice That, teaches us an awful lot about our audience when aggregated into a top ten list of articles. You’re a weird bunch, it has to be said; dirty-minded and deviant. How else do we explain the creepy comics of Joan Cornella, Laura Callaghan’s tales of Tinder cannibalism and Nimura Daisuke’s gratuitous GIFs? Granted there’s some stunning vintage advertising, an archive of emoji and some wonderfully diverse editorial illustration in there too, but for the most part it’s just smut and violence. Merry Christmas!

10 – Mac Conner (8 September)

Mac Conner is 100 years old – a whole century. Muse on that for a second while you look at this frankly stunning image from his back catalogue. The American graphic artist forged his career in the 1950s working for the likes of Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, creating illustrations and advertising imagery in an instantly iconic style. To celebrate his centenary The Museum of the City of New York held a retrospective in early September, reigniting the public’s fascination with one of the original Mad Men.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/mac-conner

9 – Eline Van Dam (15 July)

We went on a bit of a binge with Dutch illustrators earlier in the year, profiling a shed-load of creative types all loosely connected to The Hague. Eline Van Dam was one of them (though she’s now based in a small German village instead of the Dutch design capital) and her vibrant poster design won us over for its exemplary use of 1970s-inspired colour palettes and bold iconography. Sadly we’ve still not managed to commission her for anything, but we reckon 2015’s going to be the year for it!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/zeloot

8 – Joan Cornellà (27 November)

And now to the perverse illustration I mentioned at the start; the dark, dirty work of Joan Cornellà. Perhaps more than any other creative working today, Joan taps into the underbelly of the human psyche, exposing the filth that secretly makes us all smirk. Alongside images of graphic ultraviolence there’s also biting satire that deals with some topical and political issues – but then there’s also a guy with a massive turd on his head, so best not to take it all too seriously.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/joan-cornella

7 – Viktor Hachmang (7 February)

Viktor Hachmang is an illustrator and printmaker par excellence who runs Risographic print studio Vinex Pers as well as maintaining a prolific freelance practice. Earlier in the year I discussed how infuriating it was that Viktor and I are the same age, yet he’s managed to achieve the kind of mastery of subject and composition of which I can only dream. In the same 26 years I’ve managed a few awesome advances in alliteration, but that’s about it. Viktor’s hands down been my favourite illustrator in 2014, with his combination of retro-futuristic visuals, impeccable eye for colour and ever-pleasant email demeanour. What a dude!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/viktor-hachmang-1

6 – Laura Callaghan (12 August)

We were big fans of Laura Callaghan’s work already, but in 2014 she upped her game in a big way, blowing our minds with a dark and devious comic strip that detailed a grisly tale of cannibalism. In a discipline often saturated with cutesy imagery and softly-stated mantras written in flowery script, Laura’s work is a breath of fresh air. In the world of comics, her panelled narratives of powerful – even dangerous – female protagonists feel essential. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/laura-callaghan-1

5 – Karolis Strautniekas (29 January)

Sure, you’re thinking, that alarm clock that says “Shit” instead of showing the actual time is pretty funny, but I could have come up with that myself. And maybe you’re right, maybe you could, but Karolis Strautniekas shouldn’t be defined by this one image, however hilarious it may be. The fact is Karolis is an extremely talented editorial illustrator; sharp of wit and skilled of hand with an extraordinary ability to make simple imagery captivating and engaging. His layered digital imagery still maintains a tactile feel to it, recalling traditional print techniques but pushing them beyond what would be possible with those old-fashioned print processes.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration-strautniekas

4 – Richard Bravery (4 September)

Technically Richard Bravery isn’t an illustrator, though he’s involved with some of the best practitioners around. We’ve included him in this list because of his role as an art director for Penguin, and thus his contribution to some extraordinary commissions in 2014. Richard sent us an enormous box of his recent commissions in late August and then kindly took them time to answer come questions about his background and process working with the likes of Luke Pearson, Cleon Peterson, Kristian Hammerstad and Parra, giving us tremendous insight into one of the bigggest names in publishing. So yeah, we’re cheating slightly, but we promise you’ll enjoy re-reading the interview.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/behind-the-scenes-penguin-illustrated-covers

3 – Paul Noth (21 January)

As a bastion of visual and literary excellence it should come as no surprise that The New Yorker employs some of the funniest cartoonists in the world to work on its weekly panels. Paul Noth is probably one of the best, if not for his draughtsmanship then for his lightning-quick wit and unique viewpoint on the complexities of modern life. He’s also insanely prolific, so there’s an endless archive of his past work on his site to keep you entertained for the duration of the festive period. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/illustration-paul-noth

2 – Dan Woodger (30 July)

Emoji are so hot right now, having crept over from online messaging services into our daily modes of communication thanks to the wealth of weird smiley faces at our disposal on smartphones. That means they’re becoming increasingly complex; and Line is perhaps the most complex emoji platform to surface this year. In January they put Dan Woodger to work creating over 1000 unique emoji in the first three months of the year. It nearly killed Dan, but the results were magnificent – emotive, engaging and full of iconic imagery that can’t help but add to our digital discussions – and just the first in a series of artist collaborations we’ve been following excitedly. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/dan-woodger-bts

1 – Nimura Daisuke (21 November)

Top of the pops this year however was Japanese illustrator Nimura Daisuke – a latecomer to the party, having only arrived on the site in November, but the firm favourite in this year’s list. Nimura’s not only an excellent illustrator he’s got excellent comic timing, turning his simple, line-based illustrations into humorous GIFs that are by turns charming and cheeky. So there you have it, the year in illustration. Onwards into 2015!www.itsnicethat.com/articles/nimura-daisuke

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There’s been so much superb graphic design this year, from posters to identity projects to cake shop branding. The things that have got you most excited have included work for huge clients like Airbnb, posters showing the innocent victims of gun violence and on a more light-hearted note, some very sweet work for a confectionary shop. All brilliant, smart projects that show the breadth and skill of 2014’s graphic design output.Back in the cold, dark January o’2014 our lives were made a little bit brighter by the work of Pentagram designer Jessica Svendsen. It’s Nice That’s Liv Siddall reckoned she was “instantly drawn in like horny little bees to a pretty flower” when she happened upon Jessica’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Haas Arts Library identity with their superb use of colour and icons.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/graphic-design-jessica-svendsen may have heard about this project. In fact unless you were, say, on a very long holiday; or lost internet connection throughout the summer, it’s very unlikely you wouldn’t have. From bottoms to vaginas to numerous comparisons with existing logos; Design Studio’s new logo attracted its fair amour of online haterz looking for an easy target. But once these curmudgeons stepped back, it was easy to see what we saw – something “ instantly iconic but easily reproducible”, in the words of our own James Cartwright. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/airbnb-redesign-design-studio
We were wowed by the new identity Sagmeister Walsh created for the Jewish Museum in New York, which used a system founded on sacred geometry, an ancient system from which the Star of David was formed. “It’s intelligent, powerfully communicative and great-looking; in many ways an archetypal Sagmeister & Walsh project.” Nicely put Rob.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/sagmeister-and-walsh-jewish-museum the one for me, Fatties!”, we thought, looking at this great and rather non-bakeryish identity by Dot Dash. Like Anagrama’s baked-goods work, the beauty of the project was in the eschewed of cutesy cake cues in favour of patterns, a slick marque and a smart suggestion of the brand name in the widened “a” and “e”.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/fatties
A brilliant rebrand project by Made Thought aimed to “better reflect the legacy, stature and future ambitions” of paper company G . F Smith, and boy did it do a good job. New colours and the Humanist Sans typeface were introduced, as well as a “curators symbol” that succinctly moved the brand forward while reminding us of its heritage. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/made-thought-g-f-smith
We’re all more than familiar with Anthony Burrill’s big-type, bright colour woodblock posters – which are great – but in November we were very excited to see the artist take a new direction in his shocking, sad and very effective poster series Innocent Targets, created with Banana & Associates and showing the innocent victims of gun violence in America. www.itsnicethat.com/articles/anthony-burrill studio Anagrama created this gorgeous identity for Xoclad, which eschewed any tastes of sickliness or cliché in favour of bold typography and pattern. The beauty of the identity, which is inspired by pre-Hispanic typefaces, Mayan art and architecture, is that it works just as brilliantly on a pastry box as on a business card.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/anagrama-xoclad all went nuts for Norway in 2014, with Snøhetta’s designs for the country’s new banknotes proving very popular on account of their imaginatively designed images of costal landscapes translated into pixellated, colour-blocked snapshots.www.itsnicethat.com/articles/snohetta

One of the best things about being at It’s Nice That is the incredible multitude of brilliant, hilarious, weird and insanely talented people we get to talk to on a weekly basis, whether we’re dragging them around the corner from our studio for lunch in Euro Cafe, trying to squeeze as many questions as physically possible into a 20 minute Skype call or emailing back and forth for weeks at a time. The end of the year is a time for looking back, or so I’m told, so here’s my selection of the very best interviews from the site this year across photography, art direction, game design and illustration. feet up and off you When David McKendrick announced that he would be leaving his seven year stint as creative director of Esquire earlier this year Rob leapt on the opportunity to have him talk us through his favourite ever covers. From shooting legendary Keith Richards (who turned up hammered and five hours late, true to form) to dressing Morph head to toe in Burberry Prorsum, David’s reflections on the difficulties and the triumphs of being an art director at a major men’s magazine make for an brilliantly heart-warming read.www.itsnicethat.com/david-mckendrick-esquire
As mums have been insisting since the dawn of time, it’s the people we surround ourselves with who know us best, and in the case of photographer Corinne Day’s agent and good friend Susie Babchick this definitely seems to have been the case. Having put together a book about Corinne’s life, Susie talked to Liv about what London was like in Corinne’s 1990s heyday (“a very happy lunatic asylum”) and the magic that happened inside the legendary Brewer Street flat.www.itsnicethat.com/corinne-day Howard Griffin Gallery unearthed a proper London gem when they came across decades of photographs taken by Bob Mazzer on the London underground earlier this year, and happily they decided to exhibit them in a London show for all to see. He has been shooting instinctively on the Tube since the early 1980s, unintentionally creating a 35-year-long record of the subcultures and characters London’s public transport system has played host to over the years, and if it weren’t for his hippy ideology and unintrusive camera Bob might not have been able to collect this incredible archive at all.www.itsnicethat.com/bob-mazzer
Comics artist Matilda Tristram’s story would have been impossible to condense down into 400 words, so when her book Probably Nothing came out in September we decided to interview her about her experiences – falling pregnant with her first baby, being diagnosed with cancer of the colon and having to decide whether to risk losing her baby or to risk losing her life – instead. After more than a year of tempering her responses to concerned but annoying well-wishers (ash she describes in the interview) she was incredibly honest, funny, and generous when it came to talking to us. An awe-inspiring read.www.itsnicethat.com/matilda-tristram
I love this interview with Lucy Hilmer, and not only because she photographs herself every year on her birthday wearing nothing but a pair of pants, which in itself is pretty extraordinary. I also love it because when our then editorial assistant Amy came to talk to her about the photographs she was nearing 70, and they had grown into an annual marker of exactly where she was in her life each year. There’s something quite incredible about hearing a woman look back on her whole life to date, recognising what she has lived through by way of a series of self-portraits; from being an awkward, vulnerable 29-year-old to a brave adult, struggling through sadness in in the difficult years and then falling in love and becoming a mother. It’s like she’s talking through a photographic autobiography. What an amazing woman.www.itsnicethat.com/lucy-hilmer and 17-year-old Andy Gonzalez and Sophie Houzer met at a Summer camp called Girls Who Code in America earlier this year, and they decided to use their time there to create a fun, addictive game which would destroy taboos around the subject of periods and encourage women to get involved with the tech industry in one fell swoop. Enter Tampon Run. Impressed? You will be once you’ve finished reading about their personal effort to encourage social change, and the vital importance of women learning to code. www.itsnicethat.com/tampon-run
Features editor Liv’s interview with nomadic photographer John Kilar is definitely one to read on those dingy grey mornings when you’re questioning every life decision you’ve ever made to date. John travels relentlessly around America’s least commercial festivals photographing the people and the elements of counter-culture he encounters on the way, and he’s picked up an inspiring but non-preachy way of talking about inspiration, gratitude and openness in the process. Sun-soaked and softly focused, his photography is pretty damn beautiful too.www.itsnicethat.com/john-kilar

It’s Nice That founder and director Will Hudson’s appearances on the site are few and far between these days, but we managed to sit him down long enough to give us a flavour of how the past 12 months has been for him. He’s a man of big arms, few words and strong opinions and as our lodestar he guides us through whatever the art and design world throws at us. Here’s his reflections on 2014…

The miscellaneous category is rarely added to, but when it is it’s usually with someone or something pretty spesh. I like to think of it a little bit like that drawer or cupboard in your house where you stash the really useful crap that is too good to throw away. In this list I’ve compiled a few of my favourites from 2014, from bread-simulation games to round-the-clock breakfast radio. If you’re still hungry for more miscellany, just head over here. is design, right? Just because it’s not photographed on a grey background surrounded by meticulously arranged business cards doesn’t mean it’s not fully legit and somewhat genius. While were hanging about doing not much in 2014, this guy has been spending his time designing and building a 3D-printed machine that folds and spits out paper aeroplanes. Embarrassed? You should be.www.itsnicethat.com/paper-aeroplane“The beautiful story of one slice of bread’s epic and emotional journey as it embarks upon a quest to become toasted” reads the tagline beneath one of my favourite videos of the year. From the guys that brought you Surgeon Simulator comes I am Bread, the game that lets you see what it is like to be a floppy piece of bread wreaking havoc in a kitchen. Like this teaser? Head on over here to play the game itself.www.itsnicethat.com/iambread they certainly do. I can imagine it must be hard to keep reminding yourself that you are being constantly filmed while sweating profusely and going cross-eyed by the DJ at Boiler Room, but please everyone – try and hold it together. This spectacular blog collects brilliant, tiny clips of people falling out of their trees in some shape or form, and then puts it on the internet for all to see. Hours of entertainment. Remind me never to go to Boiler Room.www.itsnicethat.com/boilerroom radio is the BEST! Everyone’s all pumped and the DJ knows that his only job is to bring incomparable cheer to the beginning of everyone’s day. With that in mind, Seb Emina and Daniel Jones put together a cool site that streams breakfast radio shows from all over the world as and when they happen. Nicely designed and truly catering for an audience who didn’t even know they wanted this yet, this is fantastic.www.itsnicethat.com/global-breakfast-radio who spent many a year on KidPix or Microsoft Word will love this little site. Cloudpaint allows you to create beautiful monochromatic images on an old-school Paint game and then submit them to a gallery. Normally an online gallery like this would be full of naughty drawings of willies and poops, but this one is just full of people who have genuinely spent a lot of time crafting beautiful images.www.itsnicethat.com/cloudpaint website here that’s purely fulfilling a small and important purpose: this one is a guide to the best places to go and have a good cry in New York. Anyone who’s been to the Big Apple knows that you feel like you’re in a film pretty much every time you walk out of the door, so to cry by a fountain, an old BrownStone, or in a diner or old movie theatre just seems like the right thing to do. This well-written site gives a blow-by-blow guide as to how to do this as best you can in the most tear-jerking places in the city.www.itsnicethat.com/crying-new-york

10 hour days require some diverse, entertaining playlists. And with an office holding about 20 or so music fans beneath its roof, you can imagine there is quite a lot of different tastes floating around. In this mixtape we have tried to sum up the general nature of the music we listen to at It’s Nice That, meanwhile keeping it cool enough that you could probably put it on at a party and get away with it (apart from R.Kelly’s World’s Greatest – you may want to skip that in trendy company).

Realist methods in painting often strive for a photographic quality, leaving the viewer amazed and disconcerted by the uncanny closeness to reality. In the photography of Ruud van Empel, however, this trope is inverted. Rather than creating photo-realism within painting, Ruud constructs a kind of photo-artificialism with his photographs that verge on the painterly. In other words, where you might look at a painting by Chuck Close and mistake it for a photograph, you’re likely to take Ruud’s photographs for paintings.

Fashion photography with a pinch of the documentary; photographer Grant James-Thomas stumbled into the hybrid genre of travel fashion photography as a 17-year-old. Growing up on a farm in Wales, he found himself (just a few short years later) shooting for Vogue. Since then he’s travelled the world, photographing editorials in locations ranging from Kenya and Vietnam to Costa Rica, eventually settling in London but continuing to experiment with all kinds of photographic styles and subjects.

Stiya by Cole Barash is a high stylised sequence of images, recently released as a photo book at LA Art Bookfair, published by Deadbeat Club. A dual series, it tells the story of two events – a storm and the birth of his first child – both which lasted for four days. It’s a book which utilises Cole’s idiosyncratic “hyper-focused” method of photography to closely examine the similarities between the two events, comparing them as spaces exclusive to the elements and ubiquitous with change, seclusion and energy.

We all feel lonely from time to time. For some of us, the working hours are the loneliest time of the day especially for some freelancers spending hour after hour tucked away in a studio grafting away at a commission. For the Seoul-based illustrator known as Nano, these emotions are worth portraying, beautifully expressing loneliness in new series of illustrations she’s titled The Lonely People.

Over in Oslo, Norway, Jan Hakon Erichsen has been establishing what can only be described as a very unique artistic practice. Describing himself as a “visual artist and balloon destroyer,” Jan’s work also comes with a disclaimer: “You should really, really not try this at home.”

Having studied at Korean design college Paju Typography Institute, and with a further degree in visual communication from Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, Seoul-based graphic designer Son Ayong has a pretty good idea of how to capture and convey concepts by paying close attention to form, line and colour in text and image. Her bold poster designs draw on elements of illustration and web-based graphic works to create visual identities that reflect the overarching themes running through exhibitions, programmes, films, festivals, workshops and seminars.

Korean American graphic designer HeeJae Kim’s portfolio is one full of colour and personality. While some familiar elements do appear across his designs, HeeJae’s work is always underpinned by an attitude towards graphic design that sees typographic elements handled in an illustrative manner, a fact that’s inspired by his initial studies in illustration.

Whether or not to study a postgraduate degree in the arts is a question pretty much every undergraduate will ask themselves. But it is a pertinent question particularly within the arts, as the option to spend a few more years developing as a creative is tempting.

A self-confessed “egoist photographer who’s obsessed by his personal aesthetic research”, Leonardo Scotti first began taking pictures as part of the subway graffiti scene in Milan and wider Europe, pursuing personal projects and self-publishing them in the form of photo-zines. Over the past few years, as he’s begun to integrate the ways he approaches commissions and personal work, his practice has evolved to incorporate fashion photography. He tells us: “I found the balance between work and my personal imagery”, which has resulted in fashion shoots that pay close attention to artistic composition, as well as personal work which draws on elements of fashion styling.

Raid is a new publication by Irish graphic designer and developer Simon Sweeney. Currently based in Munich though “leaving for somewhere else in July” (very mysterious), Raid is a unique magazine as it stemmed from the never-ending stream of potential ideas that is a Slack channel. Featuring a host of exciting designers, Raid asks its contributors to imagine a game, and then design its logo.

As a young man, Kazuhiro Aihara dreamt of being a professional snowboarder and was well on his way to making that dream a reality, when all of a sudden it didn’t materialise for a number of reasons. “I felt absolutely defeated in my life,” the Tokyo-based graphic designer tells It’s Nice That. “Around that time, I realised I loved creating graphic designs and, along with snowboarding, I started designing a few different things for fashion and music flyers.”

“Looking back now, I guess my decision to get into graphic design has a lot to do with the fact that I was obsessed with MTV, music magazines, CD artworks, etc as a teenager,” says Felipe Rocha, a Brazilian designer and art director based in New York City. “My dream was to be closer to this ‘world’, and to me, design was the way to get there.”

One of our Ones to Watch 2018, illustrator Jeffrey Cheung has delighted us once again with a new publication of paintings and drawings. The book features his signature energetic nude figures, set forth in vibrant colours, with a touching innocence and simplicity of style. He says of his art: “Over the past few years, my practice has shifted from zines to painting canvas, and decks for queer and trans skateboarders. My practice is fluctuating and has become more involved with creating community space and how my visual art can be used to uplift others.”

“Anderson shelters, used condoms, buried Victorian tannic acid bottles, discarded ring-pull cans, tarmac, railway engineers in high-viz jackets, men in tracksuits, men in dinner suits.” These are just a few of the things that Daniel Soars considers “the essential signs of England,” in a recent piece on Max Porter’s recently-published novel Lanny. These are the signs that pop up throughout Lanny like old Barbara Cartland paperbacks at a Sunday morning car-boot sale. Soars could also be describing the images and atmospheres compiled in photographer Ian Howorth’s latest collection.

Nepalese photographer Uma Bista dedicates her work to addressing issues of gender inequality in South Asia, and raising awareness about the difficulties that women face in their daily lives under the systemic enforcement of patriarchal values and traditions. Having graduated from the International Photography Programme run by Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now works in Kathmandu as a deputy photo editor at Annapurna Post, a Nepalese daily newspaper.

Tess Smith-Roberts is an illustrator in her final year at Kingston School of Art. Originally from Norwich, she uses bright, bold colour and simple compositions to tells stories, her characters never complete without two black dots for eyes, and a straight line for lips.

“All my typefaces have feminist concepts or thoughts woven into them," says the type and graphic designer Charlotte Rohde. Based out of Amsterdam but having studied in Düsseldorf where the typography is usually very bold – “almost brutal but playful at the same time” – Charlotte’s designs visibly encapsulate the place where she studied while hinting at feminism which adds an emotional value to the text.

Haeri Chung, otherwise known as Super Salad (fantastic name, we know) is a Seoul-based graphic designer mainly working in print. She also founded an independent publishers called Super Salad Stuff which is where her nickname comes from, and where she compiles all her self-initiated projects as a way to keep them alive and healthy. Contributing these self-published publications to art and books fairs every year, she also distributes free papers on a wide range of topics from the subject of how to tie different knots, to documenting the inherent design applied to air mail.

Even if you have attended any kind of sports game in the Massachusetts area recently, chances are you probably haven’t spotted the photographer Pelle Cass. His images, on the other hand, would be pretty difficult to overlook.

Caricom is the magazine using football’s ability to encourage a sense of community among fans of differing backgrounds to tackle subjects absent from mainstream sports media. In particular, it recognises the need to see “football and fan culture examined through the under-explored lens of the black experience in Great Britain and beyond”. Founded by writer Calum Jacobs and Shawn Sawyers, Caricom is now in its second issue; a more refined, more diverse and even more celebratory issue.

“Imagine a time where nature and civilisation are engaged in the ultimate power struggle… Who will reign supreme? Who will achieve destruction on a level never imagined?” So speaks the narrator in the script for a virtual reality game interrogating the threat and fear of climate change, dreamt up by California-based visual artist Veronica Graham. In her new Risograph-printed publication, NAT vs CIV, self-published under the moniker Most Ancient, Veronica creates a series of storyboards that envision how the game will play out in its digitised form.

When Jieun Lee and a group of her friends traveled to Australia last year, the Suwon-based illustrator took the opportunity to paint the “good and warm” urban landscapes she vividly remembers. “These are the places where I fell in love with traveling," she tells It’s Nice That. Photographing a bank imagery that signify these feelings, Jieun then started painting from these photographs once she was back in Korea, adding a dash of Hockney’s colour palette to the charming paintings.

China’s biggest city, Shanghai, located on the country’s central coast and most well known for its global buzz in the finance world, is now also tackling the wonderful world of independent publishing through the Shanghai Art Book Fair.

Welcome to the first in a new series we’re launching here at It’s Nice That. Called Double Click, each month it will bring you a round-up of some of our favourite websites and digital designs floating around out there on the world wide web. Whether they employ lateral thinking to show us a new way of navigating a site, use animation to enhance the reading experience, or feature some downright bonkers interactions, we’ll be chatting to the creators of each site to find out more about the thinking that went into the design.

It’s not every day that a successful global fashion brand allows itself and its message to be interpreted by someone from outside the company. But that’s exactly what Paul Smith has done with a wonderfully weird new book, created by James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks, otherwise known as Rottingdean Bazaar.

The last time we wrote about illustrator and animator Dylan Jones, we were fascinated by the mysterious figure calling himself Hologram Ceiling and producing fantastically absurd, squiggly drawings on coloured paper in bright pastels and pencil. Since then, Dylan has produced three mini publications with Gridlords, as well as continuing to create his signature bizarre, hallucinatory illustrations, which take our weirdest fantasies and reflect them back at us in a funhouse mirror.

Photographer Dustin Thierry, born on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, is now based in Amsterdam where he uses his camera to bolster communities he is both a part of, and feels a responsibility towards. Working on long-term projects, his images are sensitive and full of joy, not to mention beautiful, and tackle themes surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and vulnerable minorities.

Part magazine, part photo book, Bill is an annual photography publication by Roma which describes its initiative as “prioritising visual reading without distraction”. With editing and creative direction by graphic designer Julie Peeters, Bill collates new or unpublished work from 12 contributing photographers and presents the images with no accompanying text, upholding the capacity of pictures to speak for themselves.

Welcome to the first of our brand new series, In Conversation, a new fortnightly interview with a leading light from the world of creativity. Every other Monday, we’ll publish a new Q&A here on It’s Nice That. Today, for the first instalment, we chat to Los Angeles-based German artist Thomas Demand.

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